


Welcome to Parks and Vale - Chapter 1

by twineandhope



Category: Parks and Recreation, Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-30
Updated: 2014-05-30
Packaged: 2018-01-27 15:56:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1716284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twineandhope/pseuds/twineandhope
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leslie and Ben go on a road trip, and find themselves somewhere unexpected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Welcome to Parks and Vale - Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A very, very belated birthday present for smilodonmeow. <3 Much credit goes to cirruss for filling in details, ideas, and always knowing the answers to my canon questions.
> 
> \---
> 
> Timeline:
> 
> This story is not particularly concerned with fitting into canon, but for what it's worth, it takes place somewhere in season 5 of Parks and Rec, and somewhere between Yellow Helicopters and Parade Day in wtnv.

  The car sputtered and rolled to a stop. Leslie Knope looked up from the folder of papers she was flipping through, turning to address Ben in the drivers’ seat.

  “Are we there already Ben? This says Desert Bluffs should have a series of brightly coloured welcome signs starting, uh -” she rifled through the pile - “ten miles out. I thought you were going to tell me when we passed the one with the mural of the parks.” She held up a photograph of the aforementioned mural, waving it at him from the side.

  “Leslie, the car broke down.”

  “Oh.” She took a moment, proccessing this. “So we’re not at Desert Bluffs.”

  “No.” Ben reached over the gear shift to extricate a state map from under Leslie’s pile of “Leslie’s Super Extra Fun Sister-City Road Trip Info”.  
  The map was just discernable under a forest of careful handwritten notes - “Landmark: first park bench ever installed in Desert Bluffs. Attraction: Quest Woods park, proud home of the Oft-Mentioned Dodecohedron. Food: Joe’s Diner (possible waffles? investigate!)” After a long moment staring at it, Ben gave up and handed it back to Leslie for her to look at.

  “Yeah, we’re almost an hour away from Desert Bluffs. Ugh. It’s okay, you know how to fix cars.” Leslie beamed at him confidently.

  “Uh, no I don’t.” Ben returned, confused.

  “Darn. I was really hoping you knew how to fix cars.” *“*I was really hoping he knew how to fix cars.*”* “It’s okay, I’ll handle this.” Leslie replaced the papers in her trip folder, unclipped her seatbelt, and stepped confidently out of her seat and strode around to the front of the vehicle, which was humming slightly and emitting a thickening cloud of smoke. *“*I have no idea how to handle this. I said that to keep Ben from panicking.*”*

  Ben looked on as Leslie tried and failed open the hood. She stepped back, coughing from the smoke, then set her expression one shade more determined and tried again. Three times. *“*Leslie has no idea how to handle this. She thinks that telling me that will keep me from panicking. But I’m fine.*”* Ben figdeted uncomfortably in his seat, wondering if there was some sort of magic car thing he had to do to get the hood to open. *“*Really. Just fine. Never better!*”* No one was looking, but he flashed a forced smile, for the principle of it.

  Ben rolled down the window as Leslie came around to the drivers’ side window, face dark. “The hood won’t open. I’m pretty sure something is wrong with your car.”

  Ben nodded seriously, humouring her. “Yeah, I guessed that when it started smoking.” He looked closer at the weaving tendrils of terrible black smoke. “Hey, it looks a little like an octopus!”

  “Focus, Ben.” She glanced over. “Okay, it does look like an octopus, and that is adorable. But we have bigger issues here. If we start walking now, we can make it to Desert Bluff by this time tomorrow. We’ll miss the Welcome Festival, but we can still make it for the parks tour.”

  “Les, we can’t walk through the desert for twenty hours straight.”

  “You can’t walk through the desert for twenty hours straight,” she retorted.

  Ben sighed lightly. “No, Leslie, I can’t. Why don’t we just go to the nearest town and see if they can help.”

  Leslie wasn’t listening. “You know what, you can’t walk through the desert for twenty hours straight. You know what also, we should go to the nearest town and see if they can help.”

  “Good idea, Leslie.”

  *“*That’s what we call ‘descisive planning’. Ben would be completely lost without me.*”* Leslie took a moment to be pleased at her own excellent desicion making, then busied herself helping Ben put together travel packs for the two of them.

 

* * *

 

  Fifteen minutes later, Ben and Leslie were travelling once more, this time by foot. The sun beat down from the blinding, cloudless sky, and the two stopped frequently to drink from their water bottles. A vague sense of unease crept over them as they journeyed, growing ever stronger, just on the edge of perception. Ben chalked it up to being stranded in a vast, broiling desert with minimal supplies and no cell phone reception. Leslie decided it was from boredom, and tried to keep them both entertained by listing off her favourite parts of the trip thus far.

  “Now, this may just be the heat stroke talking,” Leslie began, slurring slightly “but I think this may just be the best road trip ever. Your car should break down every time!”

  Ben silently offered her some of his water, which she stared at suspiciously but drank from nonetheless.

  “I’m just saying,” she continued, “this desert is amazing! Just look at that cactus!” She made a sweeping gesture which somehow failed to encompass the single small plant in view. “So majestic.” It was sad and withered looking, even for a cactus. Ben smiled tightly and ushered Leslie forward, checking his watch for the thirtieth time since setting out.

  “Leslie, drink more water. You’re definitely suffering from heat stroke, and I don’t know how much farther we’ll have to walk before we get to -” Ben squinted at the map, trying to discern the town name through the dense writing “- this ‘Night Vale’ place.”

  “Heat stroke, more like fun stroke!” Leslie started to go for a high five, but desisted when Ben made no move to meet her hand, and only shook his head in disapproval.

 

* * *

  

  By the time they reached Night Vale, Ben was half-supporting, half dragging Leslie along. They walked by a car lot, a trailer park, and several seemingly deserted buildings before encountering anyone. A woman and a man approached them, both wearing black suits, oversized aviator sunglasses, and communication earpieces that might have looked more menacing if not for the fact that they were obviously not plugged into anything. Each of their jackets were adorned with a badge of a silver star, bearing the words “Sheriff’s Secret Police” in a neat, blocky typeface. The two glanced at each other, and the woman stepped up to talk to Ben and Leslie, while man pulled out a pad of paper marked “Sheriff’s Secret Police Official Draft Pad”, and a wooden pencil with a matching label: “Sheriff’s Secret Police Official Pencil”.

  “Hello, citizens.”

  
  Leslie beamed blearily. “Hi!”

  “You are not in our records.”

  “Oh, we’re not from here,” Ben interjected, not meeting the officer’s eyes. “Our car broke down, and we’re just looking for somewhere to get it repai-”  
  “You’re getting your car repaired!?” The woman’s clipped monotone changed to barely suppressed fury. “It’s almost full moon!” The man behind her scowled at them, then began scribbling furiously onto his note pad.

  “Look, I’m so, so sorry, we’ll just …” Ben trailed off, realizing that he had no idea what he had done wrong. “Um … What exactly is the problem here?”

  The man with the notepad touched his ear, as if to activate the disconnected earpiece. “We’ve got a problem here. Send backup.”

  “Nonononono, no problem! No need to send anyone!” Ben replied frantically. “We, um, I promise to never do it again! Whatever we did. Just tell us, it’ll be fine, and, wait, no, don’t tell us, you don’t even have to tell us, I’m sure we can figure it out, in fact I know exactly what we did, and I’m terribly, terribly sorry, and anyway it was an accident, so we’ll just …”

  “Hello, officers. What seems to be the problem?” Ben’s desperate rambling was cut short by the arrival of a tall man in a lab coat. He smiled disarmingly and just a bit sheepishly, tucking a strand of dark, perfect hair behind his ear in an automatic gesture.

  “Citizen. These …” the officer paused, searching for an adequate word to express her distaste, “ _people_ are guilty of thought crimes, poor fashion decisions, and flagrantly discussing the repair of a motor vehicle.”

  The man nodded solemnly, adjusting his glasses. “Serious stuff. Is this by any chance a class B violation?”

  The officers silently shook their heads.

  “Okay. Probably for the best, I can never remember the lyrics to Baby Got Back. Uh, hang on a second.” He started searching through his pockets.

  Ben and Leslie just stared as the newcomer went through pocket after pocket, finally pulling out a small, crumpled piece of paper.

  The man cleared his throat, muttering “Okay Cecil, this better work…” He unfolded the small note, smoothing the creases between his fingers before holding it up in front of him and reciting in a slow sing-song cadence: “The desert is vast, the viper is fast, the future’s the past…”

  As he started talking, the officers registered alarm. They began to twitch, their eyes fixed on the [Carlos], their hands creeping toward their guns.

  “… The ship has no mast, the ballot is -” he cut off abruptly. “Oh god, wrong paper. Oh god, oh god, just … just hold on…” he held one hand toward them in a ‘stop’ gesture, the other frantically rooting through his remaining pockets. He pulled out another scrap of paper, unfolding it hastily. “Used mattress for sale, good condition,” he chanted. “Slight water staining near the edges, and a little patch where I spilled coffee on it that looks kind of like a duck if you look at it sideways and squint a little, but honestly you can just turn it over and it looks good as new. Two hundred dollars or best offer.”

  The two officers shared a glance, then turned as one and walked away. Ben and the newcomer both stood very still, watching the backs of the Sherrif’s Secret Police officers receed, short capes flapping behind them. Leslie lolled on Ben’s arm, smiling distantly.

  “They seemed nice,” she said, then turned to the man who had saved them. “I’m Leslie! This is Ben. We’re from Pawnee!”

  “Uhh… Carlos. Nice to meet you, Leslie. Ben.”

  Leslie leaned in conspiratorially, and spoke to Ben in what she apparently thought was a whisper. “The people here are SO NICE. We should ask Carlos for a picture of him to put in our trip scrapbook!”

  Ben shrugged and glanced nervously around, still not really recovered from the run in with the cops. He turned to address Carlos. “Thanks for doing … whatever it was you did there.”

  Carlos gave Leslie a look of bemusement. He seemed about to say something, then thought better of it and responded to the part of the conversation whose social norms he understood. “Frankly, I’m just glad it worked. I know I shouldn’t doubt Cecil, but Scientifically speaking, it just doesn’t make sense.”

  Leslie nudged Ben and held up her hands in a square, making L shapes with her fingers and thumbs. She help up her hands as through framing Carlos for a photograph, then nudged Ben a few more times and waggled her eyebrows at him in a way that she obviously expected him to interpret a lot more meaningingfully than he managed.

  Carlos’s look of confusion morphed into understanding and mild concern. “You’ve been out in the desert, haven’t you? Uh… Can I get you two something to drink? And maybe a place to lie down in the shade?”

  “That would be fantastic.” Leslie replied, then leaned close to Ben and continued in what she apparently still thought was a whisper. “See? SO NICE.” Ben winced at the noise, and the pair allowed Carlos to lead them away.

 


End file.
